Mine
by Tessadragon
Summary: The tale of one of the refugees from Kiev and her path, already crossed irrevocably with NoFace's, crossing now with Rex. No, she doesn't fall in love with Rex or Six.
1. Chapter 1

Hope you find this story arresting, it's about Kiev, the notorious and deadly Bug Jar, from the days before it's sealed off, to the present day, and Sofia is the key to it. I'll post the next chapter very soon regardless of how many reviews it does or doesn't get as this has been a long-time project.

~Tessa

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><p>Chapter 1<p>

**Chaos!**

Kiev, Ukraine.

The word screamed was "Monster!" which in Ukrainian was "Монстри!" it was hardly heard though amid the tumble of buildings, stone crashing against the ground. Rain tumbled through the sky, soaking the stumbling, fleeing citizens.

Who would hear the scream of a girl through all that? All the people clinging to one or two bags, holding their babies tight and gripping the hands of children old enough to run, they certainly didn't stop to look at the girl standing in the shattered chunks of the Friendship of Nations fountain, her head craned to the skies, her mouth open wide in that endless scream.

"Nicholai! Nicholai!" a woman screamed, the whites of her eyes bright. "Where are you?" A lone bag hung from her forearm from where it'd dropped from her shoulder. "Nicholai! For god's sake!" a sob entered her scream as she searched the fleeing crowds.

"Antonia!" a man's voice thinly wormed through the crowds but she swung her head in its direction and elbowed her way through. Finally she reached her husband, he held their baby son, and Antonia frantically kissed the tiny forehead even as Nicholai grabbed her by her free elbow. He pushed her out of the way as a monster raised itself from the great crack in the ground running from the shattered fountains. It was wreathed by a vile stench from the sewers below.  
>"Run!" Nicholai roared, shoving their son into her arms, and pushed her away.<p>

The EVO fixed its terrible eyes on them and launched itself at them, Nicholai swung the bag he carried into the side of its head; it roared in anger and swiped, leaving three tracks of blood down his muscled shoulder. Then someone slammed into Antonia, she spun, twisting her ankle in her effort not to hit the ground, the moment she straightened up, Nicholai was gone again! She was lost in the panicking crowd.

Antonia now held the baby, the bag still swinging from her shoulder. Holding their son tight to her chest, she shouldered her way through the stampeding crowd, her lips twisting in a prayer that Nicholai would soon follow and find her again.

Then she slammed to a halt.

There, in the midst of this madness stood the girl.

She looked maybe seven years old, she wore a yellow sundress filthy grey with dust, and dust streaked the soft red curls that fell past her shoulders. Her blue childish eyes were wide and she screamed through all the noise. She was still screaming, her face twisted in pain, no, agony! There were no words in her scream, just agony and confusion. Her skin was grey with dust and mottled with bruises.

Nicholai grabbed Antonia, addressed her harshly. "I told you to run, they are evacuating the city!"

"Not without you," Antonia said tersely but her eyes were still fixed on the girl. Like a rock in the water, people ran past her, never seeming to touch her but it was a matter of time, and the girl still stood stock still, screaming that endless scream that didn't even seem limited to her breathing.

Then a monstrous shape leapt from a falling building. It slammed people aside with its elongated, taloned arm, swiped Antonia to the ground. She instinctively rolled, her arms around her infant son to protect him. It seemed to say nothing but the girl screamed all the louder, throwing her hand up over her face as the EVO turned its strange, featureless face on her. _Mine,_ it hissed silently.

The husband threw himself at the EVO, NoFace. "Run, Antonia," he roared at his wife, grabbed the girl from the ground, pushing her behind himself. He planted as violent a kick as he could into the EVO's chest. It worked enough for the two adults, each carrying a child, to run and to merge into the fleeing, panicking swords.

The crowds were catastrophically confusing, all sound swallowed in the rush, but for the pound of feet, the choke of breath.

The city emptied though was never quiet, the air filled with the chop of military helicopter blades, soldiers gazing down at the destroyed city, watching the EVOs rampage. Soldiers waited at the fringes, ready with machine guns to gun down all EVOs that sought to escape after the refugees. Whether they had been human or animal, they were exterminated by increasingly weary, haunted men. NoFace prowled out of sight, searching relentlessly for a crack in the defenses.

Tents grew outside the city limits, across the dusty ground and the wasted fields, guards stood with rifled. Into this city of tents injured, confused, and traumatised people gathered. They were no longer Kiev citizens. They were refugees.

Nicholai, carrying the little girl, wandered alone, hollow-eyed, among the tents. The little girl silently clung to his large hand, taking two steps to match each of his strides as he searched at each campfire for his wife Antonia's face. He couldn't even ask anyone whether they'd seen her. His mouth and throat were so dry he feared coughing up blood, but there was no water. He saw people slumped over the ground, bleeding or dehydrated, fallen by the wayside among the living.

He continued walking, his legs beyond pain, driven only by a robotic instinct to keep searching, only stopped when the girl stumbled. He looked at the tent nearest to them and pushed the girl towards it, pointed, unable to say anything. Panic flared in the girl's eyes, she grabbed his hand, stared at him intently, unable to speak herself either. Finally he started walking again, the girl clung determinedly to his hand, but when she next stumbled, her eyelids lowered with the need to sleep. Finally he picked her up and held her close, glad she was light but wishing she was lighter. He stumbled on around the campfires, drunkenly searching the faces until he finally dropped to the ground near some refugees.

Antonia, where are you? his mind beseeched, the girl slept in his arms, shadows surrounding them, twisting shadows of the flaps of tents nearby, their shabby cloth innards already spilling out with sleeping and whimpering refugees, mostly children who dreamed fitfully, trembling and sobbing in their sleep. The sounds drowned the night. The little girl slept curled up against the man and at dawn he woke her up, lifted her onto his still-weary shoulders. He still didn't know her name. He didn't think to ask.

Again they quietly searched.

Would he find her? his mind tortured him with images of her broken body, of their son wailing, starving with no one to care…

Finally a woman nursing a baby at her breast looked up as they approached. Her eyes welled up with tears, the man's eyes unashamedly spilled tears too down his dusty cheeks, and they embraced, huddling close by the low campfire.

The woman reached to stroke the little girl's pretty ginger curls. "What is your name?" she asked in Ukrainian.

"Sofia," the little girl whispered. The woman drew her close.

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><p>"She is ours," Antonia told the official at the table, who tried to draw up lists of the living. "She is mine and Nicholai's daughter, Sofia Roedburgh."<p>

The official knew it was a lie but allowed it anyway.

_Mine,_ NoFace's voice whispered through Sofia's mind. Trembling, she pressed her ear against the woman's hip and her other hand over her other ear.

"Shh, shh," the woman soothed, hugging her, and led her back to the campfire. "You are ours, now."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Past the window an EVO soared and dove down into the jungle of the Petting Zoo, drawing Rex's gaze and distracting him from the dull ache of his shoulder and the oddness of not being able to move his arm. He remembered that EVO bird, it had mostly been a nuisance to catch but Holiday liked it so Six had seemed keener to catch it alive than let it fly into the Keep's engines like it'd been determined to. Holiday had theorised that it'd been a crane and for some reason she'd spouted a few bits of Latin at him which Six had explained straight-faced that she'd been talking about how cranes were a symbol of longevity and immortality.

Talking of Six, who stood near the door, his hand to his ear, listening intently. He'd been trying to raise Holiday for the last hour on the comms, ever since they'd got back from a mission involving two EVOs that had formerly been a city mayor and an accountant, both at the time on holiday in Las Vegas when they'd turned EVO. Now he frowned. "Really?"

Rex didn't like the way Six had just said that word. It made him want to jump out of the window and take his chances with the EVOs or hide in Blinky's branches just in case. He switched his gaze from the rustle of leaves below and watched the agent release his earpiece.

"Holiday's busy," Six said. "She says wherever you've stashed Dr Peterson, you can either have him fix your shoulder or else I will."

That was a conundrum and a half. Let the doctor that Rex personally hated out of the store cupboard or let Six fix his shoulder…?

On one hand, Six was used to patching himself up. On the other hand, he guessed that Peterson may suck at blood samples and seemed intent to keep practising that same diagnostic method on Rex and making this really lame joke about how the nanites would fix the resulting mess up quick enough but surely he didn't need blood samples to fix a dislocated shoulder?

"Alright then," Rex squared himself and sat up tall. "Go ahead, Six. I trust you."

Six's lips twitched but he approached and grabbed Rex's shoulder with one hand and his upper arm with the other hand, then with no delay, no word of warning, no fake countdown to make him falsely relax or anything like that, he forced it back into the socket.

"Owwww," Rex breathed his pain into that note.

"Now do you want to let Peterson out of the cupboard?"

"How did you—" Rex began then gave up and shook his head. "No thanks. He'll be fine there a little longer."

"And that small matter of food and water?" At least the store cupboard still had an oxygen supply.

"I'll let him out when Holiday gets back," Rex said and Six didn't argue. That was how much they silently agreed that they preferred Dr Holiday to carry out Rex's after-mission check-up.

Six closed the door to Holiday's lab so that no one would hear the occasional knock from the cupboard. Rex gently worked his relocated shoulder and kneaded it with his fingers. Six closed his eyes behind his glasses, suppressing the temptation to contact Holiday again and ask how long she'd take and what she was doing.

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><p>"Ahh, you have no idea a cup of tea tastes after the crap onboard the plane," the woman chuckled low, the curl of steam rising from her teacup and drifting up, adding a fragile sheen of condensation to her thick black hair tied back in an untidier bun than Holiday's. The two of them were in the scientists' lounge. Holiday's companion, Antonia Roedburgh, looked tired after the plane trip to get here from whatever part of Russia she'd been hiding in.<p>

Her eyes, always hinting at an exotic streak of blood in her family line, had already swept over the room's plain comforts, sofas for the weary scientists to sleep on after too long a shift if they had to commute home rather than staying on-premises like Holiday did, coffee machines and a kettle on the counter. A few books in the bookcase, mostly textbooks but a few copies of Dan Brown with a highlighter beside them for when the scientists wanted a laugh.

Holiday sat opposite from her, sipping from her own teacup. "Toni, I have to ask, where have you been?"

"I had to be a mother," Antonia smiled comfortably, sitting back in her chair and crossed her leg over her left in a ladylike manner. Though her thick clothes screamed of harsh winters it was clear how slender she was by the thinness of her face, the height of her cheekbones. "I see you have a mother's wrinkle too, Sandra."

Holiday laughed and shook her head. "I don't have kids."

"It's right there," Antonia tapped her own forehead, right between her eyes, "you have had to think a lot about what to say to someone special."

Sandra rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Fine, I'm not gonna argue with you…but you…forgive me Antonia for being blunt. But how can you be a mother? I heard about Nicholas…and Victor…" her voice caught on their names. Back when the Event had taken place, Sandra Holiday had still only been an assistant to the previous head scientist, a position she'd at the time prized. "I even thought you were dead. Couldn't you have at least told me?"

Antonia had been in Kiev, working with her husband at the Embassy there. When the reports of EVOs had first started emerging, she'd felt stricken and helpless but at the same time compelled to stay where she was. When she'd heard the first whispers through old classmates of the fates of the Roedburgh family, she'd tried for a while to get a hold of Antonia but never had any luck. Eventually she had given up and resigned herself to the assumption that Antonia and her husband and child were three more victims of the Event.

"No. I couldn't tell anyone what I found in Kiev." Antonia lowered her eyes. "Or rather who. Her name is Sofia. Nicholas and I found her."

"When?"

Antonia raised her eyes, a haunting light entering them. "The Bug Jar," she said simply.

Holiday's breath caught in her throat. "You…ohh. Is she safe? Is that why you came out of, well, hiding?"

"I do not know if she is an EVO," Antonia said bluntly. "There are unnatural things about the child but she is beloved to me, I have taught her all that Nicholas would have taught my son if he had not been cut down in the camp."

"I am so sorry for your loss," Holiday's voice was quiet. Though it had happened over six years ago, she had never been able to find Antonia to give this much belated message of condolence.

"As am I sorry for the loss of your sister," Antonia said.

"Thank you. But she is not dead. If I can cure her, I'll get her back."

"Well then," Antonia raised her teacup. "To rebirth."

Holiday uttered a short laugh and raised her own teacup. "To rebirth."

"I wouldn't mind a bit of rebirth myself," Antonia chuckled. "But back to business. You may find Sofia to be of interest, though I can only say she is on loan to you."

"For how long?"

"Until she chooses otherwise."

"Headstrong?"

"Independent and unusually wise." Antonia smiled.

"So how did the Bug Jar affect her?" Holiday had to ask, a note of eagerness in her voice as she leaned forward. Ever since that great disappointment of not getting the samples from the Bug Jar, she'd had to hide her increasing aggravation that she might be missing such a big piece of the puzzle.

"It affected her as much as it affected everyone who had to leave their beloved homes and possessions behind."

"Sorry."

"That's fine," Antonia waved her free hand, dispelling the apology. "However in return for loaning her to you, I would ask one favour of you and your partner."

"Oh?"

Antonia leaned closer, one eye on the security camera in the corner of the room affixed to the ceiling. "I need to get her into the Bug Jar," she said softly.


End file.
